Of Hats and Fangirls
by Stormsinger Dragon
Summary: It was such a simple request... "Don't touch my hat"... Why couldn't they have listened? Hiatus


_**A/N: Hey, people, Stormy here. This is another story of mine, but no fear! I'm not abandoning my other stories! This story is based on a series of dreams my little cousin had when we were being Harry Potter fangirls! Woot! Prepare for total weirdness! And now, on with the story of sisterly protectiveness, a hostile and mysterious shadow, and above all, magic.**_

**The Hat**

Nelly, age 13, sat on her bed reading a book; _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_, to be precise. It was a lovely day; the sunlight illuminated her pale yellow walls and hand-painted tableaus. Her bed in the corner was shone upon through one window on each wall, and the mattress in the diagonal corner was occupied as well. Nelly's cousins Haley and Bridget were visiting her, hence the large double mattress placed on the floor in the diagonal corner from the bed. Bridget –the eldest of the three– was currently sitting on the top left corner of the bed, near Nelly's closet, looking concerned; her (Bridget's) green plaid newsboy hat sat on the floor near the bottom left corner of the bed, bottom facing upward. Bridget glanced at the hat, and, seeming to come to some conclusion, got to her feet, shook her ginger hair out of her eyes and walked to the closed door.

"Don't touch my hat!" were her sharp departing words to her younger cousin. Of course, Nelly was curious. She agreed, but then walked over to the hat residing on the floor. To her shock and amazement, the inside was swirling with a silver-grey-blue-white substance, like in a Pensive. She cautiously stepped into the hat (as ridiculous as that sounds), and was suddenly sucked downwards.

"Oww…" Mumbled Nelly, as she landed on her rear on the cold, hard-packed earth. Upon looking around, she noticed a large black castle looming about half a kilometer away. She knew that castle anywhere.

"Hogwarts." She whispered to herself. She looked up from where she came, and saw her bedroom through Bridget's hat, but ignored it as she began walking quickly toward the school she had always wished she could attend. It was late evening at the time of her departure from her 'landing site', so by the time she arrived at Hogwarts, it was quite late at night. She walked in through the front gates, suddenly feeling very small and vulnerable in the atmosphere of largeness and ancient power. Nelly walked to the doors of the Great Hall, noticing the loud echo of her footsteps as she did so. With an almighty shove, she managed to open one of the giant oak doors, and, not much to her surprise, she found the Hall empty. She hurried out of the Hall and down to a fork in her path: two elegant staircases faced her that went in opposite directions. Nelly felt she ought to take the one on the right; that it would lead her to safety. However, the little girl took the staircase on the left, with a slight sense of foreboding.

Her search of the castle was rewarded by finding the Slytherin Common Room. _Odd,_ She thought to herself uneasily, _I thought that was in the dungeons…_ What alarmed her even more was who she saw inside the Common Room: Draco Malfoy. More accurately, Draco Malfoy sprawled flirtatiously on a deep green and silver loveseat giving Nelly a rather frightening 'come-hither' look. Needless to say, she bolted down the corridor. After a few minutes of running and trying to un-see what she just saw, she came upon a familiar sight. Her cousin Haley (Bridget's little sister, age 13) was standing in the hallway, tracing something on the wall before her, her task illuminated only by the light of a single torch. Nelly called out to her cousin, and waved enthusiastically. Haley returned the wave after noticing Nelly there. Nelly and Haley, while being cousins, looked nothing alike; Nelly took more after her Chilean mother, while Haley, like her older sister, had ginger hair and flaunted her Scottish heritage.

Nelly ran over and they hugged, but her cousin's hand felt cold and wet through her pale purple tank top. She broke the hug, and looked at Haley's hand. Her fingers were saturated in a red, sticky liquid.

"Hey, Hales," Nelly, asked, mildly concerned, "what's that on your hand? It got on my back, too."

"Oh, this? It's chicken blood, that's all." Haley said cheerfully with a dismissive wave of her bloody hand.

"Oh." Nelly was not as reassured as she supposed she ought to be. She glanced at the wall her cousin was previously so preoccupied with. Haley had been writing words on the wall: 'Ron + Haley' inside a heart. _Figures,_ Nelly thought amusedly, _she's a bigger fan of his than even _I _am, and that's saying something._ Just then, the girls heard footsteps ringing through the corridor, approaching rather quickly.

"Oh no, what if it's a teacher?" Haley whispered with a note of panic in her melodic alto voice.

But their worries proved to be for naught, as into the light came, not a teacher, but a familiar redheaded boy. He took one look at the blood on the wall, and another at the mildly insane smile on Haley's face and the blood dripping from her fingers (the scene reminded Nelly all too much of a horror movie… it was almost comical), and blanched. He adopted the look of unadulterated terror he usually reserved for spiders.

"Um… you Haley…?" Ron asked reproachfully, pointing at the girl. She squealed in delight.

"He knows my name! Nelly! He knows who I am!" Haley practically shrieked. Then she promptly took a running start, jumped, and the next thing Nelly knew, her cousin had hug-tackled the poor Ron to the ground. He looked rather perplexed, too.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, Nelly thought she saw movement. There! Just around the corner, where the light didn't quite reach. Were those –eyes? And long, thin fingers? There was a creature there, she hadn't imagined it. It was about the size of a House Elf, but she knew it wasn't, she knew. Looking at it gave her an odd chill, as if it were spreading its taint into the surrounding area. It reminded Nelly very strongly of Gollum, from _The Lord of the Rings_. Haley and Ron had noticed the creature, too.

_What is that thing?_

But Nelly's question would go unanswered for now, because there, behind her, was none other than Bridget, and she looked _livid_. She grabbed her cousin and sister by their hair, and roughly pulled them to her side. This resulted in an angry yelp of pain from Haley, and dirty looks from Ron and Nelly.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING MY HAT?" Bridget roared. She looked beyond livid. She was overcome with rage, it seemed.

"But" Haley began.

"No! Go back through the Portal. I'll take care of this." Bridget snarled at her sister, and that scared both girls right through the familiar Pensieve-like portal, which mysteriously had reappeared just over their heads. With a great leap, they shot through it, and into Nelly's room, but for some odd reason they were both covered in slime. Obviously this puzzled the girls, but they didn't have too long to think on it, because Bridget came through the portal (slime-free, Nelly noticed sourly), and she had replaced some of her anger with concern.

"Don't you realize what you've _done_?"


End file.
